Christian Nestell Bovee
One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.Collection: Money
Wit is better as a seasoning than as a whole dish by itself.Collection: Dishes
Ambitious princes value inherited kingdoms not so much as conquered provinces.Collection: Ambition
Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.Collection: Inspirational
In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.Collection: Strong
Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.Collection: Book
Very handsome women have usually far less sensibility to compliments than their less beautiful sisters.Collection: Beautiful
It is difficult to say which is the greatest evil--to have too violent passions, or to be wholly devoid of them. Controlled with firmness, guided by discretion, and hallowed by the imagination, the passions are the vivifiers and quickeners of our being. Without passion there can be no energy of character. Indeed, the passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways, and dangerous only in one--through their excess.Collection: Passion
Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.Collection: Business
There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.Collection: Freedom
The great obstacle to progress is prejudiceCollection: Progress
The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it--to realize it to the full--to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.Collection: Life
Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.Collection: Children
Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.Collection: Life
It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.Collection: Blow
Winter is the night of vegetation.Collection: Winter
All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.Collection: Nature
Cheerfulness is an offshoot of goodness and of wisdom.Collection: Goodness
Economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.Collection: May
Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.Collection: Self
Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,--like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.Collection: Men
Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.Collection: Men
Better freedom with a crust, than slavery with every luxury.Collection: Luxury
It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.Collection: Beauty
When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest.Collection: Mean
The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.Collection: Men
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave.Collection: Criticism
Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.Collection: Hero
Perhaps the heroic element in our natures is exhibited to the best advantage, not in going from success to success, and so on through a series of triumphs, but in gathering, on the very field of defeat itself, the materials for renewed efforts, and in proceeding, with no abatement of heart or energy, to form fresh designs upon the very ruins and ashes of blasted hopes. Yes, it is this indomitable persistence in a purpose, continued alike through defeat and success, that makes, more than aught else, the hero.Collection: Hero
By his provocations to good-natured merriment, a humorist of the first water contributes as much to the sum of happiness as the gravest philosopher.Collection: Humor
An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.Collection: Illusion
The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.Collection: Animal
Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.Collection: Leadership
Hard workers are usually honest; industry lifts them above temptation.Collection: Hard Work
The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt.Collection: Death
A particular disappointment is seldom more than an excrescence upon the trunk of a general good--a shower that spoils the pleasure party, but refreshes and enriches the earth.Collection: Disappointment
The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity.Collection: Desire
Our courage is greater to dare a visible than an imagined danger. A visible danger rouses our energies to meet or avert it; a fancied peril appalls from its presenting nothing to be resisted. Thus, a panic is, usually, a sudden going over to the enemy of our imagination. All is then lost, for we have not only to fight against that enemy, but our imagination as well.Collection: Fighting
There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.Collection: Character
The worst deluded are the self-deluded.Collection: Self
It is easier to die bravely than to live so.Collection: Courage
Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.Collection: Beauty
Ambition, in one respect, is like a singer's voice; pitched at too high a key, it breaks and comes to nothing.Collection: Ambition
In art there are two principal schools between which each aspirant has to choose--one distinguished by its close adherence to nature, and the other by its strenuous efforts to get above it.Collection: Art
A peculiar work in any art must not be too hastily judged. New styles have to create new tastes.Collection: Art
A mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to age; and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of the best friend that God gives us.Collection: Mother
An ambition to excel in petty things obstructs the progress to nobler aims.Collection: Ambition
No work deserves to be criticized that has not much in it that deserves to be applauded.Collection: Criticism
It is with charity as with money--the more we stand in need of it, the less we have to give away.Collection: Giving